


mem'ries that last

by fullmetalruby



Category: Naruto
Genre: At Least He Tries to Be, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 Bonding (Naruto), Gen, Hatake Kakashi is a Good Teacher, OOC, hes a bit emotionally broken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28952565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmetalruby/pseuds/fullmetalruby
Summary: “Hn.” Sasuke goes back to picking at his skin. Only slightly dryly he asks, “Any other helpful tips?”Kakashi isn’t stupid. He knows the question was rhetorical, and he is choosing to ignore that fact. “Lotion. Chapstick. Your fire jutsu will dry out your skin, and dry skin makes more noise.” Can’t pick at dry skin if the skin isn’t dry. Checkmate. “Also does wonders on scars. Any other questions, cub?”“Cub ?”“A cute little wolf cub without any teeth. Three cubs, actually. Helpless without their denmother.”Sasuke cracks back like a whip. “Aren’t all denmothers old as dirt?”----------[or, on the road, sasuke and kakashi have a moment to talk.]
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Sasuke
Comments: 1
Kudos: 101





	mem'ries that last

**Author's Note:**

> thank u to tim on tumblr for posting that daily writing goal sheet and kicking my ass back into writing  
> this work is not good, it is hardly in character, but it is what i wanted to write and thats everyone else's problem. stay tuned for more self-indulgent tangentially-canon nonsense.

They hunker down to sleep in a clearing about a hundred yards off the main road. There are a dozen like it within spitting distance, half-made spaces for travelers to rest.

“Hm,” Kakashi muses for a moment as he sights the spot. Immediately, all three of his genin look to him. _PEACH-RING,_ he signs, _ORDER CHECK-FOR-ANTS_. Then, he signals at the clearing he’s already selected.

With a pout, Sasuke dutifully goes on ahead to check the clearing for any traps left by the group before them. It’s likely that it will be trapped-- most caravans have a shinobi guard, and shinobi love nothing more than inconveniencing each other-- but it probably won’t be anything too serious. Predictably, when Sasuke gives the signal that it’s safe to approach they find him holding the defused remains of two flash-bang tags. They’re not really a danger. More to scare than anything else. There’s really no telling whether the next person to use any given campsite will be shinobi or civilian, and it’s bad for the general shinobi public image if they let civilians get killed in the crossfire.

_JELLY-BEAN QUESTION ANT-WHAT-KIND,_ he signs. 

Naruto makes a grabby motion at Sasuke for the tags, and there’s a brief scuffle for them before Kakashi taps his foot sharply. Sasuke releases the tags into his teammate’s custody without further argument. Naruto takes a moment to study the tags, then taps his foot and signs back clumsily. _DENMOTHER ANSWER DINNER-WITH-SHOW_.

Finally, Kakashi turns to Sakura. _BUTTERSCOTCH QUESTION BUG-WHAT-COLOR_. 

She obtains the tags from Naruto with little difficulty, though Kakashi suspects that’s just because she’s too tired to argue with Naruto even a little bit right now. They’ve been running all day, after all, and stamina is still her biggest problem. She reads the little note left at the bottom of the tag, then again, and only then does she start to sign back.

_DENMOTHER ANSWER RED-ANT-HAS._ She halts in the middle of a sign, rereads the tag, and then continues. _RED-BUG-HAS-WET-SHOE_.

“Very good, you three,” Kakashi says. The genin all sigh audibly, and he can’t really fault them. It’s been long enough since he had to run missions with non-ANBU that he’s forgotten standard Konoha field sign, so he _did_ start them out on ANBU field signs instead of just studying back up on whatever they teach at the academy. He kind of feels bad about it, but then again, if any of them end up in ANBU they’ll be prepared. 

ANBU signs are village- and often captain-specific, with the grammar being the same across all dialects so to speak, but with all the names changed. In Kakashi’s uses _bug_ for shinobi, colors for what village the shinobi comes from, and _ant_ for traps. It gets more complex from there, because Kakashi was ANBU for a long time and had lots of freedom on escort missions to rethink every aspect of his signs, but that’s as much as he’s taught his students for now. Better to get their toes wet before shoving them face first into the water. So, naturally, he starts them out with those simple signs and then makes them use only those signs for the whole day.

Hey, it’s starting out easy by ANBU standards.

Watching Sakura start to sway on her feet, he directs her to start laying out their bedrolls. He quickly dispatches Naruto to go find something for dinner-- it’ll be a good lesson for him about staying quiet if he comes up empty and has to deal with a hungry team (or worse, a team that has to resort to ration bars)-- and Sasuke to find firewood. By the time Naruto returns with a brace of rabbits his teammates have already set up a fire.

“Kakashi- _sensei_ , what was the deal with the traps?” Naruto asks while Kakashi is halfway through prepping the rabbits. “Who would just leave those lying around, and what was the deal with the wet shoe thing Sakura said?”

“Are you serious? What a stupid question. The answer is obvious, dobe.”

Lazily flicking an eye up at his two precious, cute little genin who manage to fight anytime they have to acknowledge each other's existence, Kakashi debates staying out of it, but hey. What’s the fun in being a government-sanctioned criminal if you don’t drive your students closer to committing murder? “Why do you think they were there, Sasuke?”

“As a warning. Telling anyone who comes through here to stay away,” Sasuke answers promptly. His confidence is amazing, really.

“Good shot, but tragically, wrong. Is that what they teach you at the Academy these days? Formal education sure is a mess, huh?”

Sakura pipes up from where she’s already half-asleep in her bedroll. “If it’s not as a warning, then what is it?”

“It’s a game.” Incredulous stares come from all three of them, and Kakashi takes a moment to revel in it. “Think about it. What kinds of people use this road?”

“Merchants. Travellers,” Naruto counts on his fingers. “Shinobi on missions.”

Kakashi finishes up with the rabbits and skewers them over the fire. “ Yes, very good. Shinobi on what kinds of missions?”

“Protecting those merchants and travellers.” Sasuke kneels on the other side of the fire and turns the rabbits so they don’t burn.

“Exactly right! And escort missions leave a lot of downtime. Now, it’s generally considered to be bad form to leave actually _dangerous_ traps in campsites like this, but it does make us look more impressive when the civilians see us taking down seals before we let them in the area. It also gives us something to do. Which leads to that note Sakura found on those tags. Remind me of what it said?”

“Red bug has wet feet,” she recites.

“Red bug is a Suna nin. The wet feet thing is just shinobi jargon. Makes us look more mysterious, and again, makes us look more impressive. If a shinobi has wet feet, then they can’t wait to get home to change their socks. So, it was just a little flash-bang to get our attention, and then a note that some poor bastard can’t wait to go home. It also doubles as a good training exercise for genin like you.”

Naruto positively trills. “That’s so cool! Do we get to leave one?”

Sasuke scoffs. “Of course we get to leave one.”

“We’ll leave one when we pack up in the morning. For now, dinner is served.”

Their meal passes in silence, and after a brief perimeter check Kakashi sends Sakura and Naruto to bed while he and Sasuke stay up on watch. Naruto offers up his customary protests, attestations that he can stay up later, he’ll be fine, but the moment his head hits the pillow he’s out like a light. As they get older and better at staying awake through the night, he’ll have them take shorter, solitary watch shifts, but they’re beat from a long day of travel.

A lifetime of training lets Kakashi sit still as a statue, but Sasuke is all of twelve and only a handful of weeks out of the Academy. He taps his fingers against his knee, fiddles with his bangs, picks dead skin from his mouth.

“A word of advice?” Kakashi looks down at his squirmy little pupil. “Invest in a silent fidget.”

Sasuke looks back at him, his dark eyes wide. Had he even noticed he was doing anything?

“I’ll admit that I don’t know who to outright stop you from fidgeting, but I’ve known--” _Uchiha. I’ve known fidgety Uchiha._ “I’ve known other shinobi who can’t sit still. Making sound while you’re on watch or doing surveillance can be dangerous. So.” He leaves it there.

Sasuke also lets that sit for a minute, but pipes back up. “Like what?”

Hiding a smile under his mask, Kakashi turns his body towards Sasuke. “You can tap your fingertips together, like this. Or you could get a ring that’s a bit too big and turn it with your other hand. There’s options. But it’s not a problem at this moment,” he adds when Sasuke makes a face. “We’re more likely to be struck by lightning than be challenged on this road. We’ll find you something when we get back to the village.”

“Hn.” Sasuke goes back to picking at his skin. Only slightly dryly he asks, “Any other helpful tips?”

Kakashi isn’t stupid. He knows the question was rhetorical, and he is choosing to ignore that fact. “Lotion. Chapstick. Your fire jutsu will dry out your skin, and dry skin makes more noise.” Can’t pick at dry skin if the skin isn’t dry. Checkmate. “Also does wonders on scars. Any other questions, cub?”

_“Cub_?”

“A cute little wolf cub without any teeth. Three cubs, actually. Helpless without their denmother.”

Sasuke cracks back like a whip. “Aren’t all denmothers old as dirt?” He doesn’t seem to realize that he was speaking until after he’d said it, and he immediately claps a hand over his mouth.

Kakashi presses a hand to his chest. “I’ll have you know, young Sasuke, that I am only twenty-six years old and I’ve been a jounin longer than you’ve been alive.”

The numbers almost visibly run behind Sasuke’s eyes. “You made jounin when you were _fourteen?_ ”

“I was nine, actually.”

Sasuke makes another face. He eyes Kakashi skeptically. “I don’t believe you.”

“Really. I graduated from the Academy at five and made chuunin when I was six. My team were all so much older than me. They used to make our _sensei_ sing me lullaby while we were on missions.” It hangs in the air for a moment. Kakashi himself hadn’t realized until years after the fact just how messed up it was that Kakashi had been allowed to graduate so early. He’d been a legal adult at age _five_. Obito for sure meant the lullaby thing as a taunt, but Rin probably genuinely worried. 

“Did you need it?”

Kakashi looks down at Sasuke. The kid isn’t looking at him. Instead, his gaze is fixed on the road, visible through the trees. Kakashi doesn’t really want to talk any more about himself, but the kid is normally so closed off. There’s no way he’d dare to question or insult Kakashi like this if Sakura or Naruto could hear-- too much of his identity is based on being a better shinobi than them, and good shinobi follow orders and are respectful. All of them have been getting better about the ‘respect’ thing, in that they respect Kakashi less and themselves and each other more, but they still respect him enough to listen when he gives orders. It was one of the first things he taught them to do.

“Did you need a lullaby to sleep?”

Shrugging, Kakashi stretches a bit. “I didn’t think I did then, but I certainly slept better on those missions than I did at home. I was a kid.”

“What song was it? That they made your _sensei_ sing?”

“Edge of the night. Ever heard it?” When Sasuke shakes his head, Kakashi only has to think about his next question for half a second. “Do you want to?”

Sasuke nods, and scoots a little bit closer to Kakashi as he does. Leans up against the same tree, even. The song Kakashi sings isn’t a long one, but it’s slow and low and it loops for as long as he needs it to. By the time he finishes the first round, Sasuke has moved even closer. After the third, he’s close enough to touch. After the fourth, he leans into Kakashi’s shoulder, and before Kakashi realizes it the kid is asleep there.

From this angle, Sasuke almost looks like Obito.

The thought shouldn’t be as surprising as it is. Sasuke’s mother Mikoto was related to Obito somewhere (something about sharing a grandmother or great-grandmother or something like that) and Sasuke is her spitting image. Kakashi had the pleasure of spending time with Uchiha Mikoto before her death, as she was a close friend of Kushina’s and Kakashi was always hot on Kushina’s heels as her guard. Beneath all the anger and childish bravado, when Sasuke is being quiet, Kakashi can almost mistake him for her.

He completes the rest of the watch alone and tucks Sasuke away in his bedroll before he shakes Sakura and Naruto awake.

Kakashi knows that he probably won’t sleep, not entirely. He knows how to be asleep but alert. He relaxes to thoughts of his team, of when Minato- _sensei_ would dutifully sing lullabies on quiet nights and Obito would snicker but be the first person to fall asleep to them. Later, when Kushina was pregnant, she and Minato had taken turns singing at night, which they swore was practice for when Naruto was born. 

In the morning, Sakura will be dispatched to find breakfast while Naruto breaks down camp and Sasuke avoids looking at Kakashi. The genin will eventually agree on the message _green bug has new shoes_ \-- Konoha nin with a ways to go. Kakashi will leave it underneath one of Kushina’s favorite seals for inconveniencing people. Sasuke and Naruto will find ten different things to argue about over the course of an hour, and Kakashi will teach Sakura the proper signs for insulting teammates, which the boys will not be taught for several more days at least.

A ways to go indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Edge of the night” or “Come Sisters, Come” is a song I learned at Girl Scout camp, and serves as my daily reminder that GS camp is a little bit culty. I figured it sounds like a lullaby you’d hear in Narutoland. I decided not to include it in the main text, but it goes as follows:  
> Edge of the night / a campfire’s light / Come sisters, come  
> Magic of song / a place to belong / Come sisters, come  
> Warmth of a fire / warmth of a friend / Come sisters, come  
> When days have passed into mem’ries that last / Sisters, come back again.
> 
> hmu on tumblr @fullmetalruby, where i post lots of nonsense about lots of things


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